Chances
by Wikkid X
Summary: When Doctor and Martha land in a village surrounded by a stone circle they are bombarded with crop circles, alien threats and meddling kids... Can they work out what's going on before it's too late?
1. Prologue

I began writing this story somewhere between the 26th of May and 2nd of June 2007. I know that exactly because it was the week between 'Human Nature' and 'The Family of Blood'. I wasn't very well acquainted with the concept of fanfiction, but I really wanted to write a Doctor Who story. I had this great idea of a creature that lived in a mirror! …And the very next episode of Doctor Who, the Doctor – guess what? – trapped an alien in a mirror. But, undeterred, I pressed on. By about chapter five I reached an enormous, several-years-long block.

Only recently did I come back and finish it off. I got past my block by going back and inserting a scene with these insect aliens. Shortly after, 'Planet of the Dead' aired, and – guess what? – there were these insect aliens!

The moral of the story is, write fanfiction quickly, before (as zotlot just said) "the Welsh thieves can get their mitts on them"!

This story is set in Avesbury, a village near Stonehenge with a stone circle round it. Apologies to anyone familiar with the village in question, as my depiction of it here is probably really far from what it's actually like – I visited it once when I was eleven, but can't really recall it in any great detail.

I happen not to own 'Doctor Who' concepts and characters. Saffron Carter and Natasha Simmons, however, are entirely my thirteen-year-old self's.

---

**Prologue.**

Saffron Carter woke up. Shattered fragments of her dream floated around her mind, disappearing fast, until just one thing remained: the last sound she remembered hearing. A noise like an engine, but not a car, or any other recognisable vehicle. A strange, repeating, pulsating sound, like some sort of _alien_ engine, starting faintly, coming louder and louder and louder until… she'd woken up. Saffron wasn't even sure it had anything to do with her dream.

A streetlight shone through the gap in the curtains, leaving a triangle of orange light on the opposite wall. Saffron pulled back the curtain and surveyed the street outside. It was raining hard, but through the rain she could tell that it was the silent hour, just before dawn, when the world gets a little bit darker. People who said midnight was the magical time were wrong. If magic existed at all, it would happen now.

She peered across the road, trying to find something that could have made that noise. There was definitely _something_ there. Something dark and mysterious and box-shaped. She couldn't tell any more through the dark and the rain. But she was sure it hadn't been there when she'd gone to bed.

Saffron glanced at her reflection in the mirror on the wall and stopped dead. Her eyes, which when she had last checked, had been a deep, conker-coloured brown, were now red. Blood red.

She rolled off her bed and walked right up to the mirror. Saffron closed her eyes for a few seconds, then opened them again. They were still as red as ever. Had it been daylight, she would have thought it was simply a trick of the light or something, anything to not believe that her eyes had changed colour. But now, just before dawn, the magical hour, anything was possible. And although she didn't want to, she had to believe it.


	2. Chapter 1

**One.**

"So, where are we?" Martha asked, grinning across at the Doctor as the TARDIS came into land. "And when?" She made her way over to the doors, hugely excited.

"Well…" the Doctor began, glancing at a screen. "Earth."

"Britain," Martha guessed, a moment after she'd opened the doors a crack and peered outside.

"Yeah," the Doctor looked up at her, surprised. "How'd you know?"

Martha pulled the doors open fully. Outside, torrential rain poured down from the sky like thousands of icy needles.

"Ah," he said, grinning. "Yeah, according to the TARDIS we're in Avesbury."

"Where?"

"Avesbury, a little village with a stone circle round it, near Stonehenge," the Doctor explained. "June 2008."

2008. Martha could only think of it as next year, but at the same time, it was right now. Somehow, that was scarier than being trapped in a tiny escape pod drifting towards the sun; cooler than meeting Shakespeare. It was incredible, amazing, unthinkable.

Just like the Doctor.

There may have been a tiny part of her that just wanted to go home and live life like a normal human. Travelling with the Doctor wasn't exactly _safe_, after all; one of these days, some weird, alien creature was going to catch up with her, kill her, and she'd never see any of them again. Her family. Her friends. The countless anonymous, nondescript people who she'd walked past in the busy London streets, every day. The people who she'd never speak to, never get to know, but who were just _there_.

But she kept that part of her mind firmly locked away. Because it was worth every risk, every second of danger, just to travel through space and time with this weird, eccentric, mad alien, a man with two hearts. It was worth being locked in a hovering car, in the dark, with a depleting oxygen supply, falling towards some unknown creature at the bottom of the pit, just to know that somewhere, somehow, he'd always rescue her. And in return, she'd always help him. Even though really, he didn't really need her help, he just needed her there. Someone to share the universe with.

"Are we gonna go and look around, or are we just gonna stand here all day?" The Doctor was hovering by the open doors, waiting, rather impatiently, for Martha to end her musings and join him. "Got a brolly?" he asked as she approached the doors. Rain still poured down outside, as hard as ever. "You're gonna need it."

"Shouldn't we should wait a bit and see if it stops?"

"Nah," he said, stepping out into the deluge. "It's only a bit of rain. Let's go and explore!"

---

Saffron opened her bedroom door and stepped out onto the landing. She couldn't bear to just sit there for hours in the dark, with only her newly red-eyed reflection for company. A floorboard creaked, deafeningly loud in the silent house.

Tasha was probably going to kill her for this. Saffron gently, cautiously pushed open her best friend's bedroom door and stepped inside.

"Tasha," Saffron whispered, approaching the bed. No response.

"Tasha," Saffron said, right by Natasha's left ear. No response.

"Tasha," Saffron practically yelled, shaking her friend's shoulder. At this, Natasha groaned and rolled over.

"Tasha, wake up!" Natasha opened her eyes and glanced at the clock on her bedside table.

"Saffy, it's about four in the morning. Go back to bed."

"I need to ask you something, Tasha."

"This had better be important," Natasha pulled herself up until she was leaning on her elbows. "Go on."

"What colour are my eyes?"

"Brown, of course," Tasha said, in an exasperated voice, without actually looking at Saffron's eyes.

"No, Tasha, look at me" Natasha swivelled round to face her friend. "What colour are they?

"They're brown, like I said!"

"You mean they're not red?"

"Why would they be red?"

Saffy was confused. "I woke up, looked in the mirror, and my eyes were red."

"Your eyes can't just change colour. It was probably just a trick of the light – the streetlight reflecting weirdly through the glass or something."

"No, my eyes were actually red."

"Well, they're not now, are they? Just take a look in my mirror."

Saffron complied. Her eyes were utterly and resolutely brown.

She didn't bother looking in her own mirror on the way back to bed. She thought she knew what she'd see.

---


	3. Chapter 2

**Two.**

"Rain, Martha, the smell of rain!"

"Can't we just head back to the TARDIS?" Martha practically shouted over the hammering of the rain.

"Nah!" the Doctor replied, his hair plastered down onto his forehead.

"Doctor, my trousers are so wet they're actually weighing me down. The pavement's like a river. I'm cold. I'm wet. You might be immune to hypothermia, but I'm not."

"Come on, it's only a bit of rain," the Doctor said. "And anyway, don't you wanna see the standing stones?"

"Of course I do, but…" Then Martha had an idea. "Why don't we just hop back into the TARDIS and go forward a few hours? Hopefully by then it'll have stopped raining."

The Doctor paused. "That'd be like cheating." He paused. "And sometimes, the TARDIS misses. Not by that much if you think about the size of time and space, but enough to make a big difference in human terms. Like one time I tried to end up up twelve hours after I set off, and ended up twelve _months_ later." He cringed and appeared to be lost in his memories for a moment, before snapping out of it and saying, "And, I have a feeling something's happening. Right here, right now. Or about to. We don't wanna miss it."

"How d'you know?"

"I can smell it." The Doctor tapped his nose.

Martha smiled and they walked along the rest of the street in companionable silence. It was then she realised just how silent it was. No cars, no people. Nothing but the rain. Just before dawn.

As though the world was waiting for more than just sunrise.

"Here we are," the Doctor said as she followed him in climbing over a gate. On the other side, a well-worn path led along the curved line of stones. As they came close to the nearest one, Martha was struck by the age-old mystery – how did prehistoric people get these hulking great rocks, from miles away to here, into a circle? And why?

And then she realised: she was travelling with someone who might just be able to tell her the answer. If one person on Earth knew, it would be the Doctor.

She looked up and saw that he was already a few metres away, inspecting the next stone in the circle. "Now, that's weird," he said quietly, glancing up at her approaching, though he only really had eyes for the enormous standing stone. "'cos to me this doesn't look like your everyday, run-of-the-mill, built-by-prehistoric-people-with-no-outside-help kinda stone circle. I'm no expert, but to me this looks like a Khorèsthan Lattice Matrix…"

He looked up at her as though this should have been a huge, dramatic, opening-notes-of-Beethoven's-5th revelation, but instead she just looked rather baffled. "What's a Koresthan Lattice Matrix?"

"A _Khorèsthan_ Lattice Matrix," he corrected her. "Well," as he spoke, the Doctor's hand delved into the pocket where he kept his sonic screwdriver. "It's like – Now, that's equally weird."

"What?" Martha asked cautiously, although she had a feeling she already knew what the answer would be.

"My sonic screwdriver seems to have disappeared."

A few minutes later, Martha found herself buried under a mound of miscellaneous items from the Doctor's pockets. Various things stuck out in a 'why the heck was that in there?' kind of way: a bag of jelly babies, a jigsaw piece, a kazoo, a blackened banana, a crowbar, a small rock, a cheese sandwich, a penknife, a black chess knight, a small piece of paper that looked as though it had been torn off a larger, more intricately complicated diagram… but no sonic screwdriver.

"OK, so it's not in your pocket," she said, handing to him the top few things from the mound. "Are you sure you haven't just left it in the TARDIS?"

The Doctor, who had been busy inspecting the banana, replied, "Of course I haven't. I always keep it with me."

"Except for when you've dropped it from the top of the Empire State Building," Martha pointed out. "We might as well check the TARDIS anyway. You never know."

"OK," he said, rather reluctantly, as though he didn't really think there was any point.

Dawn was breaking as they made their way back to the TARDIS, and the rain had slowed to a light drizzle. As the Doctor pulled out the key, they heard a shout, "I don't know who you are, but you're not Saffy!" followed by the sound of a front door opening and footsteps running, splashing along the puddle-ridden pavement.

Without speaking, the Doctor turned on the spot, stuffed the TARDIS key back into his pocket and walked across the road, towards the small detached house where the shout had originated from. Martha, equally wordlessly, followed. She knew there was no point in objecting. Once the Doctor was intrigued – as he was now – there was no stopping him.

---


	4. Chapter 3

Just so you know, the Doctor's previous adventure with Natasha is my own invention, and isn't documented anywhere. Yet. I was going to edit out the whole thing, but that would have meant getting rid of some lines I couldn't bear to delete. Sad, I know – I'm not usually that sentimental about lines if deleting them is for the good of the story. But probably because this fanfic has been part of me for such a huge amount of time, I decided to keep it. Leaves scope for a prequel, too.

---

**Three.**

The door of the house was wide open. Martha glanced around for any sign of whoever had just left it, but there was no-one anywhere. The Doctor entered without hesitation, but Martha lingered for a moment on the doorstep.

"Would you mind telling me who you are, and what you think you're doing here?" A girl of about fifteen yelled at them over the wooden banister, then ran down the narrow staircase. "You see, I don't usually allow random men to stroll casually into my house." Her obviously dyed dark red and black hair was swept hastily back into a ponytail, and she was pulling a deep purple dressing gown over her black silk pyjamas.

"I'm the Doctor, and this –"

"Doctor who?" the girl demanded, interrupting the Doctor's introductions, and still not noticing Martha.

"Just 'the Doctor'."

The girl's response surprised the Doctor as much as it did Martha. "No you're not."

"What do you mean, 'No I'm not'?"

"I mean, I've met someone who claimed to be 'Just the Doctor', and he didn't look anything _like_ you."

A look of recognition dawned on the Doctor's face. "Oh! I thought I'd seen you before! But you've dyed your hair, haven't you? It's Nat… Natalie… no, Natasha - Natasha Simmons!"

"But I've never seen you before in my life! Have you been _stalking_ me or something?"

"No, I –"

"And what are you doing in my house?"

"Well…" the Doctor was still recovering from being shouted at so ferociously.

"We heard you shout, and wondered what was going on. We wondered if we could help you." As Martha spoke, Natasha started, noticing Martha for the first time.

"Yeah, well," her arrogant and demanding personality seemed to suddenly slip off her shoulders, "I guess I could do with a little help. But I don't see why anyone else would understand it any more than I do."

The Doctor smiled. "Try us."

---

"…but I couldn't get back to sleep so I went into Saffy's room. She was just sat there, cross legged, on the bed. And I was like, 'You know Saffy, you were right. Your eyes are actually red.' And it was like she'd changed. Just a little bit. It wasn't like she was now a mindless zombie or anything, she'd just… changed. I doubt anyone who didn't know her was well as I do would have noticed. I barely did myself."

"Hmmm…" the Doctor was clearly deeply intrigued by Natasha's story. "Interesting."

"Do you think this has got anything to do with the Koresthan Lattice Matrix?" Martha asked tentatively, not wishing to derail the Doctor's train of thought.

"Khorèsthan," he corrected her again. "But yeah, I reckon so. Could be a coincidence, of course, but I'm generally rather suspicious of anything that seems to be a coincidence."

Natasha looked confused. "Er, what's a Koresthan Lattice Matrix?"

"Khorèsthan. Khor-ès-than! Honestly, why can't you humans just pronounce things properly?"

Natasha didn't seem to mind that her question hadn't been answered. She just stared at the Doctor, saying, "You're not him… you can't be him. But you sound so much like him – talking about humans as though you aren't one…"

"I'm not human - I'm the Doctor. I regenerated, changed, but I'm still him. I'm still that guy in a leather jacket who suddenly appeared in your life and changed it forever, then disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as he came. Have you still got it? The book that changed history. Well, one of them. Wellll -"

"Of course I've got it. It was the only proof that I hadn't just imagined the whole thing. Oh, you are him! Doctor. But where's that girl, Rose, and who's _she_?" Natasha looked scornfully at Martha, who tried her best to stare confidently back. The Doctor's face fell, and Martha, glancing across at him, saw it again. In his eyes, that same look that spoke of love and loss. That look that said, basically, or so she thought, 'I loved Rose so much more than I love you, Martha'.

"Oh," Natasha made her own conclusion from the Doctor's expression. "I'm sorry."

"No," he replied, with a sudden grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "She's not dead. This is Martha." Natasha gave her a brief nod of acknowledgement, which Martha grudgingly returned. "Enough sitting around. We need to do some investigation," the Doctor leapt up from his seat on the stairs and ambled towards the door. "Come on!"

"Where are we going?" asked Natasha, rushing enthusiastically to his side.

"I dunno, you tell me. Where d'you think Saffy is?"

"One of her favourite haunts, probably. I'll show you where."

It had finally stopped raining, leaving the early morning landscape feeling fresh and new. The Doctor followed Natasha eagerly a little way down the road; Martha was just considering returning to the TARDIS and leaving the Doctor and his new companion alone together, when he turned round and beckoned to her.

So, he hadn't _completely_ forgotten her.


	5. Chapter 4

**Four.**

Natasha was a fast walker; even though the Doctor was too, he soon lagged back to walk with Martha. Although it was still largely overcast, the sun was beginning to poke its head from behind a cloud. The clouds echoed Martha's mood, the sun did not.

"What did you mean before, you 'regenerated'?" she asked him, putting aside her feelings for a moment.

"Oh, it's a Time Lord thing. I know your medical student mind won't be satisfied 'till I've explained it in vast scientific detail, so let's talk about it later."

"You'd tell her straight away," Martha muttered, mainly to herself, but half-hoping the Doctor would hear. "Rose. Even Natasha."

"There she is! Come on, Doctor!" Natasha called back to them.

The Doctor grabbed Martha by the hand and ran towards the spot where Natasha was standing, looking upwards.

Saffron was sitting on top of a high wall, swinging her legs, her shoulder brown hair obscuring her face. At first, Martha couldn't see anything the slightest bit strange about her. Then Saffy looked up. After all the weird and wonderful things she'd seen, nothing freaked Martha out more than those eyes.

They looked perfectly normal but for their colour; even so, when Saffron looked up at her, it was as though staring out was not a human, but something unknown, intelligent and malicious, which looked straight beyond Martha's eyes and into her mind. However, after a few moments of staring and seemingly reading Martha's thoughts, Saffron, or whatever was inside her, shrank back slightly, surveying her warily. This human was different. She knew things. And she wasn't afraid.

Then the thing inside Saffy then decided to look at the Doctor's mind. It was interested in him; it hadn't encountered a male human before.

The thing inside Saffy took one look inside the Doctor's mind, and fled.

Natasha jumped back, startled, as Saffron's eyes widened, turned white, then back to their original brown. Saffy looked around, looking confused.

"Saffy?" Tasha said hesitantly.

"Yeah, what?"

"What - why did you run out of the house?" Natasha decided that this was the best way to find out if her best friend was back to normal.

"I didn't _run_, I walked, and I dunno, Tash, you were just acting a bit weird."

"I wasn't, you were."

"No, _you_ were." Saffron looked a lot more confused now.

"And what happened to your eyes?"

"Nothing happened. I reckon I must've imagined my eyes being red - I was half asleep at the time, and when I woke up they were brown again."

"No, in the morning they were actually red."

"I'm pretty sure I know what colour my own eyes are!"

"You weren't so sure last night!" Natasha and Saffron were now glaring at each other.

"Yeah, well -"

"Are we going to stand here arguing all day," the Doctor cut in, "or are we going to do some more investigating?" He looked eager to set off, although where to, only he knew.

"Who's he?" Saffy asked Natasha, noticing the Doctor for the first time.

"I'm the Doctor," he said before Tasha had a chance to reply.

"Doctor what?"

"Just 'the Doctor'," Martha answered, tired of being ignored. Saffron raised her eyebrows, surveyed Martha critically for a moment, then went back to ignoring her.

"And you know him?" Saffy demanded of Natasha.

"Yeah, we're old friends, aren't we, Doctor?" she grinned at him, then smiled mockingly at Martha.

"That's right," he said, although Martha had a feeling, or possibly just a hope, that he didn't speak with as much conviction as he could have.

"So where are we going?" Natasha asked.

"Back to the stone circle, I reckon." The Doctor thrust his hands into his pockets where his sonic screwdriver wasn't, and stopped. "Actually, change of plan. Tasha, come with me back to the TARDIS and help me look for my sonic screwdriver. Martha, Saffy, you go on to the part of the stone circle we looked at before, Martha, and see if you notice anything else weird about it."

---

As soon as the Doctor and his companion were out of earshot, Saffy burst out, "Who does he think he is, ordering us about?"

Martha was glad the Saffron had stopped ignoring her, and even more glad that Saffron seemed to be thinking in a similar way to her. "And who does he think he is going off with _her_ when it was my idea to check the TARDIS in the first place? I'm supposed to be his best friend, his companion, he wouldn't even be here without me. We're supposed to be travelling the universe together! He brought me here and he can't just -"

"Sorry to interrupt your rant," Saffron began politely; she seemed to realise it was best to interrupt now before Martha got fully into her stride, "but travelling the _universe_?"

"That's right." Martha wasn't in the mood for explaining.

"And what's a TARDIS?"

"It's parked outside your house - the blue box - it's a time machine. Time and space."

"That's not possible."

Somehow, Martha found herself growing to like this tall, inquisitive teenager. "I've just about lost count of the things I've done recently that aren't possible. Now come on, let's go and check out this stone circle."


	6. Chapter 5

**Five.**

"Well, Doctor," Martha called, as the Doctor and Natasha arrived back from a brief and fruitless search, "I can now officially confirm that this," she patted the huge stone, "is a big rock."

"Really?" he sounded genuinely surprised, but his grin gave him away. "You're right, it is a big rock, but it's not a type usually found on Earth…"

"So it's an _alien_ big rock?"

"Something like that, yeah. And more than that," he knocked it with a fist, "it's hollow."

"So we've got ourselves a big hollow alien rock?"

"We've got a circle of big hollow alien rocks," the Doctor corrected her. "And I'd know for certain if I had the sonic screwdriver, but judging from the positioning, I'd definitely say it's a Khorèsthan Lattice Matrix."

"Er…" Saffron began a little tentatively, having been ignored for some time, "what's a Khoresthan Lattice Matrix?"

"Khor-ès-than. Slightly more emphasis on the è."

Martha rolled her eyes pointedly.

"Khorèsthan Lattice Matrix… how can you not know what a Khorèsthan Lattice Matrix is? Everyone knows what a Khorèsthan Lattice Matrix is!" Then he stopped, staring into the distance, and said, sounding infinitely interested, "Look at that!"

"What?" said Martha, exasperated.

The Doctor pointed. "Over there, look."

"What are we looking -" Natasha began, but then they all saw it. They were looking down on a field of dark corn stalks, but in the middle was a large, perfectly circular, lighter patch.

"Crop circles…" said Saffy.

"But I thought crop circles were all made by two blokes called Doug and Dave," Martha objected.

"Some of them, yeah. Not all of them." The Doctor was making his way unstoppably down the hill; the others just followed, helpless.

"Are you telling me that the nutters who say crop circles are caused by alien spaceships taking off are _right_?" asked Martha.

The Doctor shrugged. "Sort of." He stopped walking right at the edge of the circle. "But what if the ship hadn't taken off? What if it was still -" he reached slowly out, into nothing, then stopped, as though something was stopping him from reaching any further - "here?" He looked round at them. "Touch it, go on."

It was the weirdest feeling: smooth cold metal under their fingertips where there should have been air.

"And that's a space -" Saffron broke off as a shadow across her face from behind them. "…Ship" she concluded, turning to face the strange creatures which hovered threateningly behind them. There were three of them, six-foot and insectoid, glittering iridescent blues and greens in the sunlight.

"And you are…?" one of the insectoids asked in a cold, cultured voice.

"Ah, erm…" The Doctor rifled desperately through his pockets. "That is…" Finally he pulled out the psychic paper, waved it in front of the insectoids' faces, and announced, "Corn Police." He glanced up at their expressions, which may have been taken aback or just mildly amused, then launched off with, "_This_ is a Level 5 planet. You can't just go parking your invisible spaceship in the middle of a cornfield on a Level 5 planet! Honestly, the amount of people who think they can just swan in in broad daylight and park their invisible spaceships in the middle of a cornfield… I'm afraid, sir, it doesn't work like that, and I'm going to have to ask you to -"

"Sorry," one of the insectoids interrupted, "but did you say level_ 5_ planet?" The Doctor nodded cautiously. "Since when is Lunaraphath 6 a Level 5 planet?"

"Um, this isn't Lunaraphath 6. It's Earth - er, Sol 3?"

"Honestly," the greenest insectoid said to his companions. "I told you we were going the wrong way."

"If you want to get to Lunaraphath 6, go… that way" - the Doctor pointed into the sky - "until you get to a big gas planet called Jupiter - Sol 5 - then turn left."

"Oh, thank you," one of the insectoids said. He pulled out a little remote control, pressed a button, and a sleek silver spaceship shimmered into view. "Come on, guys," he said, opening up a hatch in the ship and climbing in.

A moment of stillness. Then the ship shot off into the sky, leaving only a crop circle behind it.

Martha turned to the Doctor. "_Corn Police_?"

"Hey, I was thinking on my feet!"

She let it pass. "It's weird, but travelling with you, I got the impression that aliens all want to kill us, and take over the planet, and… but they were really just space tourists?"

"Yeah!" His grin made Martha melt a little bit. Then his expression changed. "Hey, Martha, do you feel like _lunch_?"

Martha realised she did feel a bit peckish. "Yeah, lunch would be good."

"The pub down the road does a great half roast chicken," Natasha suggested.

"Cool," Martha said, "let's go there."


	7. Chapter 6

**Six.**

While they were waiting, Saffron leaned over and said to Martha, "You made up with_ him_," she indicated the Doctor with a jerk of the head, "quickly."

Martha just shrugged, and said, "Hard not to, a guy like him."

Saffron was about to reply but was waved over to the bar by someone she knew.

Now having no-one to talk to, with the Doctor and Natasha busy reminiscing about the previous time they'd met, Martha leaned back in her chair and surveyed the pub. She was surprised by the amount of stereotypical 'bikers' - all black leather and beards.

Another biker came in just as they were tucking into their food, but this one was different. As soon as he came in, it went noticeably cold, starting with his immediate area but gradually spreading through the rest of the pub. And the lights went out, again beginning right above him, but eventually causing complete darkness.

A moment of silence. Then the screams began. Martha groaned inwardly. Even in a pub full of bikers… Under the mask of the panic, the biker stared straight at Martha. And she stared straight back, realising as she did so that his eyes shone yellow in the darkness.

She saw him silhouetted against a curtained window, making has way towards a door marked 'Staff Only'. She looked round at the Doctor, but he was busy realising once again that his precious sonic was missing. As the biker reached the door he pulled it open, stopped, stumbled, and collapsed.

"Medical student," the Doctor muttered to Saffron as Martha rushed over to check the biker was OK.

"Who, Martha?"

"Yeah…" he smiled. "We met in a hospital."

"Are you two…?" Saffy left her question hanging, leaving him to fill in the gaps.

"Nah," he replied, as though the idea was completely ridiculous. "We're just travelling together."

"Travelling where?"

His eyes lit up as he spoke, "Wherever we want."

An official-looking man appeared from somewhere, saying, "Okay everyone, if you could just leave by the nearest exit, please. I'm sure it's nothing; I'm sure it's just a fuse, but if you could just leave by the nearest exit, that'd be great. Thanks."

"They're evacuating just for a power cut?" Saffy said quietly to the Doctor.

"Exactly - there's gotta be something going on. I like the way you think, Saffron Carter." Suddenly he stopped, sniffed, breathed in deeply and said, "What's that smell?"

"What smell?" said Tasha.

"That - smell! It's like, it's like, it's like -"

While Tasha and Martha were still staring at the Doctor, Martha reappeared. "Hey, Doctor, can I borrow the psychic paper for a moment? I just want to check something."

"Sure," he said distractedly, handing it to her without even looking at her. "What _is_ that?" He was bobbing up and down, breathing hard, flicking his tongue out like a snake, tasting the air. "I know it, I just can't place it! Ooh, that's annoying."

"If you could just make your way to the nearest exit, sir…" said Mr Official, coming over to them.

Saffy glanced around; they were the last people left in the pub. "If it's 'just a fuse', why the evacuation?" she asked.

"It's just…" the man began, groping for the words. "It's just health and safety - standard procedure - nothing to worry about - now, if you could just -"

"It smells like _someone's trying to drain the Van Allen Belts_!" The Doctor's voice rose in a crescendo which ended with him rushing from the pub. Saffy and Tasha exchanged a glance and followed, leaving an extremely confused official behind them.


	8. Chapter 7

**Seven.**

A complex-looking machine stood in the centre of the pub car park, a large threatening cable wrapped around an even larger cylinder; beneath it a mass of gleaming metal and flashing lights. The whole contraption hummed with suppressed energy. An extremely familiar insectoid creature buzzed around the controls, not unlike the Doctor scurrying round the TARDIS console.

"You!" said the Doctor himself, stopping in his tracks in the shadow of the great machine.

"Me," the insectoid returned airily, glanging up at the Doctor before returning his attention to switching some switches. "I can't _believe_ you fell for our whole 'space tourists' thing!"

A pause. "Um, it's probably none of my business, but what's that big flashy machine actually going to do - once it's launched, I mean?" the Doctor asked, mock-tentatively.

"It will drain the Van Allen Belts and destroy all life on Earth! Mwa ha ha ha!"

"Yeah, that's what I thought," said the Doctor, barely suppressing a grin, to Tasha's surprise.

"Um, Doctor, isn't that bad?" she asked him quietly.

"Nope!" This time he gave a huge, beaming grin round at Tasha and Saffy, then up at the insectoid.

"What _are _the Van Allen belts?" asked Saffy.

"Belts of charged particles around the Earth. A lot of the radiation from the sun's made of charged particles, and the Earth's magnetic field just traps them in these big weird-shaped blob-thing-shaped belts before they hit the Earth."

"But with the Van Allen Belts gone, there will be nothing to stop the full weight of the sun's radiation to pour down upon the planet's surface! All life on the planet will be destroyed! Mwaa h-"

The Doctor held up a finger. "Actually, no. It's the Earth's magnetic field that stops the radiation. Clearing out the radiation that's already been trapped wouldn't really do anything."

The insectoid seemed unfazed. "Ha! Your lies and babble won't stop me!" He pressed a large green button and the machine's humming grew louder and higher pitched. Blue smoke began to rise from the machine. "It's launching! Nothing can stop me now, nothing!"

The engine's humming stopped dead. The lights flickered out. The insectoid broke off mid-evil laugh. Saffy looked round at the Doctor but he was as confused as the rest of them.

Then, through the dispersing smoke, a figure emerged. A figure with dark, spiky hair and a red leather jacket.

"Martha!" said the Doctor in amazement. "What did you -" Then he broke off as she came properly into view. Her face was expressionless, emotionless, and her eyes shone, almost glowed, a bright electric blue. "Ohhh, I'm so sorry."

"What did you do?" the disappointed insectoid demanded.

"Nothing." the Doctor said shortly, then turned and looked Martha straight in the eye. "But I think I'd like a word with the thing inside Martha Jones."

Martha took a few steps forward, away from the dead machine, until she was standing almost close enough to touch the Doctor, staring up at him unblinkingly with those eyes.

"Identify yourself."

Her gaze faltered. "But, Doctor, it's me, Martha."

"No, I'm talking to the thing _inside_ her. The… parasite, or whatever you are that has some degree of control, and is changing her eye colour."

"You identify _your_self," Martha, or the thing inside her, demanded. "You're not a human, you swagger among them as though you're something… more."

"I'm the Doctor."

"Is that your species?"

"No, but I'm just… a wanderer, I'm not important. You, on the other hand, may be the centre of this whole mystery, so come on, identify yourself!"

"…Qituva," it admitted sulkily.

"Quituva?" the Doctor repeated, looking thunderstruck.

"Why, what's a Qituva?" Tasha muttered to him.

"No idea," he said brightly. "More importantly," he turned back to Martha, "how much control do you have over her?"

"Oh, I simply… suggest. From where I sit it's a simple matter to send subliminal images up the optic nerve to the brain."

"Implying you inhabit the eyes?"

"Currently, yes. I sit reflected in the corneas."

"Reflected? So you're some kind of… light?"

"Quite."

"Okay, next question: what are you doing on Earth?"

"Inhabiting people's corneas."

"I'd gathered that. Why?"

"I need energy. These lifeforms are perfect vessels."

"What do you want energy for?"

"To get home." With that, the electric blue eyes flickered and closed, and Martha sank to the ground.


	9. Chapter 8

**Eight.**

Martha sat up slowly and gave herself a brief check-over. Breathing normal, pulse normal, no sign of concussion - "I'm fine," she said determinedly to the Doctor, who was kneeling beside her, looking concerned.

He gave her a captivating grin, jumped up, then helped her to her feet and gave her a brief hug.

"Can you remember it?" he asked, suddenly serious again.

"Yeah, the whole thing," Martha replied. "The Qituva must have transferred into me from that biker guy in the pub. He'd been heading towards a staff entrance, so I - well, I suppose, _it_ - borrowed - the psychic paper," she remembered, pulling it from her pocket and handing it back, "and went to investigate. The door led to the kitchen, and when I got there it - the Qituva - sort of sucked all the energy out of the room: the lights and ovens went off, and it went really cold. Then I came back outside and did the same with that machine."

"What did it do when it was talking directly to me?"

"It wasn't like it blocked me out, it was more like…" Martha struggled for a way to describe it - "when you blurt out something you didn't mean to say, that you weren't even aware you were thinking. If that makes sense."

"Yeah, that's… yeah," said the Doctor, deep in thought. "The insect creature's gone," he noticed.

Martha looked round. The dead machine stood, shadowy and forlorn, ridiculously out of place in the sunny car park, but its owner had indeed vanished.

"So's Tasha," Saffy said, taking them by surprise; they'd completely forgotten she was there.

"What? Why didn't you say?" asked Martha.

Saffy shrugged. "I didn't want to distract you."

"When did she disappear?" said the Doctor.

"The same time as the insect thing, I think…"

"It might have captured her or something!" Martha said. "We should probably go and check the field where they were parked before, for starters."

The Doctor's expression was impossible to read as he jogged along the road beside Martha.

A small group of pigeons strutted into their path; Martha and Saffy dodged round them, but the Doctor stopped dead.

"They're just pigeons, Doctor, come on!" said Saffy.

"They're not pigeons," the Doctor replied. "Look." He gestured at the group of birds, which were walking… exactly in time, their heads bobbing absolutely simultaneously.

"Oh, don't tell me they're aliens," said Martha. "How many alien plots can this place hold?"

"No, they're not aliens."

"What, then?"

"They're robots."

He leant down and pounced on the one at the very back of the group, lifting it bodily up to show the others. It looked sharply round at them, inquiringly, looking for all the world like a genuine pigeon. But in the corner of her eye Martha could see the rest of them continuing across the street, completely synchronised. She suppressed a shiver; travelling with the Doctor had given her a kind of sense for when things weren't quite right.

The Doctor grabbed a handful of the feathers on the back of the bird he was holding and tugged mercilessly. The feathers came away easily, revealing a glinting silver metal casing beneath.

He shoved his hand into his pocket, and his shoulders slumped. "No sonic," he remembered. "Oh well, never mind," he said – then stuffed the entire still-moving pigeon into his pocket. "I'll look at that later."

Martha and Saffy gaped at him.

A dazzling grin. "Come on."


	10. Chapter 9

**Nine.**

The insectoids' spaceship was visible, crushing down the corn. As they came down the hill towards this impossible structure, Martha felt the Doctor slip into hero mode beside her; by the time they reached the bottom he was striding, on a mission, the Oncoming Storm.

He marched them round the spacecraft until they found the door, then reached into his pocket, realised _again_ that he didn't have the sonic, rummaged around a bit – and pulled out a crowbar. Martha watched in amazement as he shoved it into the crack between door and frame, wrestled for a moment then yanked the door upwards and open.

He stowed the crowbar back inside his pocket, breathing heavily, then stepped into the spaceship.

The scene that met them wasn't quite what they'd expected.

Natasha stood with her back to them, pointing a slim but powerful-looking gun at the three insectoid aliens. As the Doctor, Martha and Saffy stepped into the room something on the gun clicked into place, a green light came on – and Tasha pulled the trigger.

"No!" the Doctor yelled, rushing forward, but too late: as he got to Natasha a beam of white light shot from the gun and the three insectoid, caught in the blast, were vapourised. The Doctor pulled the gun from her and threw it to one side, shouting, "What did you do that for?"

Tasha looked rather taken aback. "They'd captured me, and more to the point, tried to destroy all life on Earth!"

"That doesn't mean you had the right to kill them!"

"They would have killed us, the entire planet!"

"We had to give them a chance."

"But Doctor, they were the bad guys! I thought that was what you did."

"No." The Doctor had stopped shouting, stopped gesturing, but this cold stillness was somehow worse. "If that's me, then how am I better than them?"

"It's how he works," Martha clarified. "Every creature in the universe gets one chance." She hesitated, certain this wasn't the best time to bring this up. "But Doctor, when was the last time anyone actually _took_ the one chance?"

He surveyed her silently for a long moment, then said, quietly, "That isn't the point."

She knew. She knew that was the one thing that stopped him from descending into darkness. So Martha just nodded, and that was that.

Before the Doctor had a chance to go back to glaring at Tasha, Saffy stepped in. "While we're here, this ship must have some kind of scanner or something. Is it worth taking a look at the Lattice Matrix thingy?"

It worked: the Doctor jump-started back into action. "Yeah, good idea," he said, giving her a smile, then scurried off around the edge of the circular room, investigating buttons and switches and screens in an excited manner.

"Natasha," Martha said, turning to her while the Doctor was occupied, "how on Earth did you manage to escape those insects? I thought it was them holding you hostage, not the other way around."

Tasha just shrugged. "The gun helped."

"Where'd you get it?"

"It was hung on a hook just inside the door."

"And you fought off three -"

Martha broke off as the Doctor said, "Ah, here we go!" He pulled out his glasses as a large screen sparked into life, showing a 3D plan of the surrounding area, including the stone circle. The Doctor used a joystick to zoom in on one of the stones, then typed a command into a keypad to scan the ground beneath the stone.

"Oh yes!" he said as he read the results that came back. "Khoresthan Lattice Matrix, definitely. But ooh…" He was frowning now. "This doesn't look good. It's damaged."

"But what _is_ it?" Martha, Saffy and Tasha all said, almost simultaneously.

He looked round at them. "It's a sunlight catcher. The Khoresthan, they're like plants; their ships run on sunlight. So building this big old stone circle was their way of refuelling."

"But the stone circle's been here since Prehistoric times," Saffy objected.

"And so have the Khoresthan, because the Matrix is damaged. The light detector's bent upwards, so it's only gonna take in sunlight when the sun's at its highest in the sky – once a year, at midday on the longest day.

"So, the Khoresthan are running out of fuel, so they park on this handy planet, hide their ship, set up the Lattice Matrix and go into hibernation, telling it to wake them up when the tank's full. They expect it's only gonna take a few weeks or so, but instead they've been stuck here for millennia."

"What if the Qituva came with them?" Martha realised. "It's made of light; what if it got trapped inside the Lattice Matrix and brought to Earth, and only recently escaped?"

"And now it's trying to get energy," said Saffy. "But what for?"

"I'm not sure," said the Doctor. "But I'm guessing that even though it's damaged, the Lattice Matrix will be pretty full by now. That's a lot of energy for one life form to absorb. We have to find it." He rushed from the spaceship, the others following.

---

"One thing I don't get," said Natasha as they jogged along beside the Doctor, "why does it keep changing colour? When we first saw it it was red…"

"But it was kind of yellow in the pub," added Martha.

"And then it was blue when it was in you," Saffy said to Martha.

"And now it's reached violet," said the Doctor, stopping dead outside a shop, where a small girl was standing, perfectly still, with bright violet eyes. She stared at the Doctor for a moment, then all the lights in the shop went out, the girl blinked, and the Quituva was gone.

All down the row of shops, like dominoes, the lights went out. "It's travelling in the glass," said the Doctor urgently. "It's getting faster, and I don't think it's going to stop for a chat again."

"But what's after violet?" Saffy asked. "It's going through the rainbow, I get – oh. Ultraviolet."

"And then what?" said the Doctor. "X rays. And then…"

"Gamma radiation," said Martha.

The Doctor nodded. "Getting more and more deadly just as it gets harder to stop." He paused. "What's the date?"

"What's that got to do with it?" Saffy objected.

"What's the date?" he insisted.

"Um, the 21st of June, I think," said Tasha.

Martha worked out what the Doctor was getting at. "The longest day? So it's today the Lattice Matrix takes in sunlight?"

"Yeah," said the Doctor. "So it's today the Qituva can break in and steal the sunlight. What time is it?"

Saffy glanced at her watch. "Five to twelve."

"But we've already had lunch!" said the Doctor. "Hang on, five to?"


	11. Chapter 10

This is the last-but-one chapter. I'm afraid I may have left a few holes in my conclusion here. Ah well.

---

**Ten.**

"We're too late!" The Doctor groaned, pointing along the path to one of the stones, beside which a tall, long-haired young man was swinging a sledgehammer into a shallow hole he'd dug, breaking something on the stone itself, just below the surface.

"What do we do now?" asked Tasha.

"Er, guys…" said Martha, staring, wide-eyed, behind them.

"What?" said the Doctor, not taking his eyes from the Qituva's host, who was beginning to glow with a white light.

"Behind you."

The Doctor glanced round briefly then turned back. "What?"

"No, really, look," said Saffy. "The tree."

The Doctor turned round again. And stopped dead. The tree was moving.

Not just moving, but breaking out of its own bark. It peeled away like a cocoon, revealing a strange, tall, stringy, bright green creature. He stepped out of the cracked shell of the tree self-consciously, evidently not expecting there to be anyone there as he emerged. "Um, hi," he said with a weirded-out smile. "Hey, what's he doing to our Lattice Matrix?"

With a last confused glance at them, he strode over in the direction of the Qituva.

"So that's a Khorèsthan?" asked Saffy.

"Yep," the Doctor replied. "And so, I'd imagine, are they…"

A crowd of tall green creatures had emerged, all gathering together to surround the Qituva, cracking their knuckles menacingly.

"Wait!" shouted the Doctor, rushing in to the middle of the throng. "Stop right there. You don't need to hurt him." He turned to the Qituva. "And _you_ don't need to do this."

The Qituva paused in his gathering, the glow fading a little. "But I do. I need the energy."

"That higher level of energy happens to be lethal to the people on this planet. Qituva, I give you one chance. Stop taking in energy. Go back to a harmless colour – I've always liked orange…"

"Or what?"

"Or I'll let these people do whatever they like to you." He gestured round at the angry Khorèsthan, who were evidently growing impatient.

"But I need the energy. I need to get home."

"And you think it's okay to kill people to achieve that?"

"It is regrettable… but necessary."

"No, it isn't. If only you'd asked, if only you'd listened; I have a ship. I could take you away, take you somewhere you'll be harmless, somewhere you can soak up energy to your heart's content."

The Qituva hesitated, then turned away from the stone, the white light fading completely. An ordinary-looking young man again, he put a hand to the stone and poured more of his energy into it, his eyes cycling backwards through the rainbow, finally coming to rest at orange.

"Okay then," he said with a smile.

The Doctor did a double take. "Seriously? You're taking the chance? You're actually saying yes?"

"Yes!" the Qituva said, sounding amused.

"See that, Martha?" the Doctor said as he emerged from the disappointed-looking crowd of Khorèsthan, the Quituva following behind him. "He said yes! Brilliant! _Molto bene_!"

At that moment there was a load beeping noise coming from all around them, from _beneath_ them, and the standing stones began to vibrate.

"What's that?" asked Martha.

"Our ship has finished refuelling!" One of the Khorèsthan answered her, making her jump. "We can go home."

"Brilliant!" The Doctor looked round delightedly at Martha, Tasha and Saffy and said, "Well then, to the TARDIS! _Allons-y_!"


	12. Chapter 11

**Eleven.**

"Oh, you should probably get out of that poor guy," the Doctor said to the Qituva. "I've got a mirror somewhere, hang on," he rummaged through his pocket and pulled out a little folding mirror.

Martha stared at him, fighting the urge to laugh.

"For just such an eventuality," he clarified.

"No, it's to check his hair," she said to Saffy, who giggled.

"Don't listen to her," the Doctor urged her – but couldn't resist a glance at his reflection as he unfolded the mirror for the Qituva to enter.

The young man blinked and his eyes reverted to their natural blue. The Doctor snapped the mirror shut. The young man looked round at them in absolute bafflement. "What the heck?"

"You don't want to know," Martha said. "Trust me."

"You're probably right," the young man agreed, and walked away.

"Right, we'll be off then," the Doctor said to Saffy and Tasha.

"You're leaving?" said Tasha.

"Yeah, we've got to take this little fella to the galactic core – lots of suns, not many people," the Doctor replied.

"But… can't I come?"

The Doctor looked surprised. "No," he answered flatly.

"Why not?"

"Well, for one thing, you've still got a gun in your pocket."

Tasha put her hand to her pocket in surprise and pulled out a tiny gun. "Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that. I wasn't gonna use it!"

The Doctor took it from her and chucked it into a nearby bin with a loud clatter. He pulled out the sonic screwdriver, pressed a button and the bin started smoking.

Martha gaped at him.

"What?"

"The sonic!"

He looked down at the silver implement in his hand. "Oh yeah! Oh, it was in the bottom right inside pocked, riiight! I put it there so I wouldn't forget where it was."

"But, Doctor, can't I come? I wasn't gonna use that gun, I swear, I took it from the insectoids and forgot all about it. And being with you today was magical, and you're right, I was completely wrong to kill those insectoids, every creature in the universe deserves a chance, and…" Tasha broke off, noticing his expression. "Why not?"

"You're too young," he said shortly. He turned to Saffy. "Look after this one. Don't let her kill any more aliens."

Saffron Carter smiled. "I'll try. Good luck, both of you. Enjoy time and space."

"Oh, we will." And with that, the Doctor and his companion went back into the TARDIS, and simply faded away, across the vortex, firstly to somewhere near the galactic core, and then… who knew?

As Saffron and Natasha turned away to go home to the most mundane Saturday afternoon in the world, a lone pigeon strutted over the patch of grass where that blue wooden box had stood.

A lone, robotic pigeon.


End file.
